


The Light at the End of this Tunnel

by PetrichorPerfume



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Absent Parents, Abusive John Winchester, Angst, Baby Sam, College, Dean Hates John Winchester, Dean is Twenty Years Old, First Words, John Winchester's Bad Parenting, Kid Dean, No Wincest, Protective Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 12:36:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1779367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PetrichorPerfume/pseuds/PetrichorPerfume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean first hears about college when he's in fifth grade. It sounds a lot like a way out, for one of them at least.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Light at the End of this Tunnel

Dean is there when Sam takes his first step. John isn’t. He knows he should be happy for his baby brother, but he can’t help but feel that soon he’ll have one less burden to carry, that soon Sam will be able to run for his life if the need arises. 

Dean is there when Sam says his first word. John isn’t. It breaks Dean’s heart when he hears it, because it’s not anything normal like Dad or Dean – that’ll be his second word – or no or food, or whatever else babies say. No, it’s demon, because that’s all Dad ever talks about when he actually bothers to spend more than ten minutes with his sons. That’s the day that Dean learns to hate his father. 

He’s the one responsible for feeding Sammy, but more often than not he goes hungry because John doesn’t leave enough money and he’s not old enough for a job, not old enough to con, not old enough for anything, really, and he’d rather not eat than let Sammy go to bed hungry. Sometimes he thinks that he should hate his brother, but he doesn’t because Sam is the only thing he has left, and he’d promised John that he’d protect him or die trying, and that seemed like a promise worth keeping. 

Dean doesn’t go to school until Sammy is old enough, because John doesn’t want him to leave Sam alone. Sam is three and entering first grade, and Dean is seven and entering second. Sam is the second smallest kid in his class because he’s two years younger than everyone, but no one questions it because even though Sam is small for a five-year-old, he’s huge for a three-year-old. Dean is lost from the very start, so Sam teaches him everything he learns in first grade while Dean struggles a year ahead of him. 

Dean hears about college when he’s in fifth grade, and it sounds like a way out, and even though he knows it’s too late for him, it sounds like something Sammy could do, so he starts saving up for it. At first it’s only five dollars of nickels and pennies, but it doesn’t matter because he’ll find a way now that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for one of them. 

By the time he’s twenty, he’s been hunting for ten years and Sammy hates monsters just as much as he knew he would. He’s only saved up a little over a hundred dollars, but it’s enough to pay the application fee for Stanford. He tricks Sam into writing the essay one day when he’s ‘home’ sick by handing him the prompt and telling him that his English teacher had said that it was sixty percent of his final grade. 

By the time Sam gets the e-mail saying that he’s gotten in, with a free ride, no less, Dean has come to the realization that he can’t live without him, but it’s too little, too late. 

Sam tells him that he’s going, expecting a fight, but Dean just tosses him a bag of nickels and pennies totaling five dollars and fifty-six cents and tells him to have a good life. 

John has a couple of choice words for Sam when he tells their father, and Dean swears to himself that if he doesn’t let Sammy go, he’s not going to wait for the monsters to kill his father. 

When Dean catches wind of several massive demonic omens near Stanford, he doesn’t have a choice. He takes Sam and runs. John is missing; that much is not a lie, but the man could be dead for all he cared. He brings Sam back in time, and waits outside the door, counting the seconds. He counts seventy-four before the screaming starts, and just like that, the light at the end of the tunnel is extinguished.


End file.
